Modelling a transformational rights-based approach to Indigenous Australian youth leadership development

In a previous discussion, the authors drew on the findings of an evaluative study of the Richmond Emerging Indigenous Leadership (REAL) Program conducted in Victoria, Australia, to explore how the experiences of Indigenous Australian participants in a youth leadership program could be used to critically interrogate affective and spatial dimensions of citizenship; resilience and identity; and daily acts of citizenship. At the conclusion of the paper, the significance of rights to their citizenship was noted, but not explored (Walsh et al., 2018). This chapter returns to those findings to further unpack the possibilities and benefits of a rights-based approach to Indigenous education. In the same 2018 paper, the authors also highlighted how notions of empowerment are culturally imbued with notions of power rooted in dominant, non-Indigenous discourses and structures of ‘power holders’. The following discussion proposes the notion of the ‘dynamic cultural interface’ to investigate this program. Such a notion could be useful in developing future Indigenous youth leaders using a transformational rights-based approach in their roles as leaders within their local Indigenous as well as non-Indigenous communities.